At domain industry conferences, one question keeps coming up: what do you think about the new domains? The safe answer is “they’ll work, but it will take time.” Whether that proves true or not, new extensions do appear to be eating into registration numbers for some classic alternatives, and .net, .info, and .biz are bearing the brunt of it.
Just a few months ago, the loudest advocates for new domains (.club, .email, .nyc, .london) were proclaiming the era of generic domains was over. A new internet was about to be born, free from the tyranny of .com, where the scarcity of options would no longer hold anyone back.
Today, those predictions are far from reality. Far from losing steam, .com domains keep growing. The same goes for .org and most country-code domains (.ar, .mx, .cl, and so on). But the rise of new alternatives does seem to be chipping away at extensions whose identity was never clearly defined: .net, .info, and .biz. While new domains have added over 1.5 million registrations since February (by their own, admittedly debatable, figures), .net, .info, and .biz have collectively lost more than 200,000.
.ORG holds its ground
The most likely explanation: domain investors, individual users, and businesses looking for an alternative to an unavailable .com have started picking new extensions instead. This would also explain why the number of .org domains keeps growing, unlike .net, .info, and .biz. Over time, .org has built a strong, clear identity closely associated with nonprofits and advocacy organizations.
That’s likely the roadmap new domains need to follow if they want to succeed long-term. Only extensions that manage to build a strong association with a specific user segment or market niche will sustain themselves over time. Photo: hanging on by SuperFantastic.
